If you have anything to do with a public Web site, you know how addicting referral logs can get. It's just so much fun to see where your hits are coming from.
Now some spamhauses are beginning to prey on that - knowing that Weblog owners in particular are prone to this somewhat obsessive trait.
These companies have sort of reverse spiders that call up Web sites in their database and leave interesting-sounding domain names in the referral logs. Weblog or site owners see the addresses in their logs the next morning, wonder what it's about and so go to the site - where they get not something useful, but spam stuff.
The ever vigilant types at MetaFilter noticed a Montreal company pulling the stunt - saying it could spam-blast 50,000 Weblog sites for only $1,000. The guy in charge of that company now says it was just "a test" and that
I'm listening to what people are saying. I'll adapt or I'll discontinue. I'm not planning of becoming the major annoyance of the blogging world.Still leaves some wriggle room there. However, as MetaFilterians then noticed, another company, Data Shaping Solutions is already seriously into referral-log spamming. As Data Shaping boasts about its "Neural Marketing":
We use our proprietary web robot technology to access the top 200,000 websites over a period of 5 days and leave a trail in each logfile. As the website owner checks his daily site statistics, he will find a clickable link to your website in his report...Back to Compendium
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